Organizer and Staff Commands

This section of the tutorial addresses special commands for combat organizers and staff members.

Starting Combat

When someone wants to start a combat scene, they use the +combat/start command. This will start he combat and tell you the "combat number", which is a unique ID for the combat.

Combat can be designated as 'mock' or 'real'. Mock combat represents training, sparring, or anything else that doesn't leave any lasting damage. Anything in the simulators should always be mock combat.

The person who starts the combat is referred to as the organizer, and has special commands available to them.

+combat/start <mock or real> - Starts a combat. MOCK combats are for sparring, training, or mock combats where no real harm is done.

+combat/stop <combat #> - Stops a combat.

+combat/all - Shows all combats going on

As soon as everyone has joined combat, you will need to execute a 'new turn' at the beginning of a combat before setting any actions. This initial new turn will reset the pose and action tracking and prompt everyone to enter their actions.

+combat/newturn - Starts the first turn.

After that, just wait until the system tells you everyone has posed and acted, and trigger another new turn. All subsequent new turns will result in a calculation of who hit or missed, where they hit, and with how much damage they did as well as who was knocked out of the fight. Repeat until the combat scene is over.

Balancing Combats

Lopsided combats are generally not much fun for either side. As an organizer, it is important for you to balance the skills of PCs and NPCs to ensure a reasonably fair fight. You should also check to make sure everyone has the proper gear and stance setup.

+combat/skills - Views a summary of combatant skills

+combat/gear - Views a summary of combatant gear

You can use the NPC commands to select appropriate NPCs for the fight or to adjust temporary NPC skills as needed.

Another way to balance combat is to apply a special modifier. Badguys kicking your players' butts and you don't want them to? Give a few of them a -40 modifier and watch the tables turn. Sometimes you have to be sneaky to ensure the players have fun, and don't wreck your theme in the process.

+combat/mod <name>=<modifier, + or -> - Sets a special modifier.

Pose and Action Tracking

As the organizer, the combat system will notify you when everyone has posed and entered their actions into the system. If time is passing and you still haven't seen those messages, you can check the 'slackers' command to see who's snoozing. You can then choose to poke them, enter an action on their behalf, or simply skip over them.

+combat/slackers - See at a glance who hasn't posed or chosen their actions.

Teams

Teams are a convenient way of organizing combatants into smaller groups when they split up. PCs are automatically assigned to Team 1 and NPCs to Team 2. You can change someone's team at any time.

+combat/team <name>=<team#>

Targets

PCs pick their targets when they aim or attack. NPCs do so automatically. By default, NPCs on Team 1 will aim at Team 2, Team 2 will aim at Team 1, and NPCs on other teams will aim at anyone not on their team.

You can change this by targeting teams against specific other teams. They will only pick targets from the teams you specify. You can also list specific individuals as targets. For example, you can specify that teams 1 and 3 will target teams 2 and 4, but that Bob will specifically target Mary.

Please note! These commands apply to ALL NPCs. If you have other players running NPCs in your combat, be sure to let them know that this will redirect their NPCs' targets, and they'll have to fix it.

+combat/randtarget <name>targets> - Spits out a # of random targets for name.

NOTE: NPCs automatically pick an appropriate action and a target when the retarget command is triggered. They will keep their target until it's taken out or until someone does a retarget. However, you can manually force them to pick a new action or a specific target using one of the NPC combat commands.

Modifiers

Organizers may apply situational modifiers to characters based on things like darkness, rain, or asteriods. A modifier is just like a skill roll modifier (a +/- percentage). Do not use this for damage modifiers; they are factored in automatically.

You can also give someone a lethality modifier, which applies to weapon damage. This is also a percentage, just like the weapon's lethality rating.

+combat/lethal <name>=<modifier, + or -> - Sets a lethality modifier

So if you really want to kill someone, set their opponent to have a huge to-hit modifier and lethality modifier.

Damage

There are several staff-only commands used to modify and inflict damage, to make adjustments for the inevitable cases where someone attacks someone they shouldn't have, or the combat system gets wonky. These are not available to general organizers; only staff.

All damage commands may be used on either a PC, NPC or Vehicle.

+damage/mod <name>/<#>=<stat>/<level> - Modifies details of an injury. See +damage/mod for the possible stat values.

+damage/clear <name> - Clears all damage (even healed damage) from the database. This should only be used for temporary NPCs.

+combat/unko - Un-KO's someone who shouldn't have been (organizer only)

NPC Management

See NPCs.

Vehicle Management

See Vehicles.

Log

Each combat maintains a log of what happened, along with debugging info. You can view this using the +combat/log command. If you suspect a bug, you can email the appropriate section to Faraday.

Unmanned Thingies

It is possible that someday you may have a situation where there is an "unmanned" attacker or defender. For example, a tank that's just sitting there parked with nobody in it that the PCs want to destroy, or a booby trap that the hapless badguys walk right over.

The combat system is not really set up to deal with these situations, so you have two choices:

Just RP it. Nothing wrong with that. Have folks make some appropriate +rolls and be done with it. You can even manually inflict the damage using +damage/inflict if it's important that it be in the combat system.

Put in a dummy attacker or defender. If it's an unmanned vehicle target, just make a NPC pilot with a skill of 1 (thus making him so crappy he will never dodge). If it's an unmanned attacker like a mine, just make a NPC attacker with a skill appropriate to how well the mine was placed.

As always, remember that the combat system is a tool to aid RP, and will never be able to account for all possible situations.